Contents

Lore

Biography

Story

Previous Bio

League Judgement

Malcolm Graves is a wanted man in every realm, city, and empire he has visited. Tough, strong-willed, and above all relentless, through his life of crime he has amassed (then invariably lost) a small fortune.

Raised in the wharf alleys of Bilgewater, Malcolm quickly learned how to fight and how to steal, skills that have served him very well over the years. Smuggling himself to the mainland in the bilge of an outgoing cargo ship as a youth, he stole, lied, and gambled his way from place to place. But it was across the table of a high-stakes card game that Malcolm met the man who would change his life: the trickster now known as Twisted Fate. Both men saw the same reckless love of danger and adventure in the other, and a dysfunctional partnership that lasted nearly a decade was born.

Combining their unique skills, Graves and Twisted Fate were an effective team, pulling off scores of heists. They stole from and swindled the rich and foolish for cash, fame, and the sheer thrill. Adventure became as much of a lure as the payoff.

On the borderlands of Noxus, they set two renowned houses at each other’s throats as cover for the rescue of an heir apparent being held hostage. That they pocketed the reward money only to ransom the vile young man to the highest bidder should have come as no surprise to their employer. In Piltover, they hold the distinction of being the only thieves ever to crack the supposedly impenetrable Clockwork Vault. Not only did the two empty the vault of its treasures, but they tricked its guards into loading it onto their hijacked cargo ship. Only once the pair were over the horizon was the theft discovered, along with Fate’s trademark playing card.

But eventually their luck ran out. During a heist that went wrong, Twisted Fate seemingly betrayed and abandoned his partner. Graves was taken alive and thrown in the infamous prison known as the Locker.

Years of imprisonment and torture followed, during which time Graves nursed his hatred for his former partner. A lesser man would surely have broken, but Malcolm Graves endured it all and finally escaped. He clawed his way to freedom and began his pursuit of Twisted Fate, the man whose treachery consigned him to a decade of unspeakable misery.

Years later, Graves finally had his showdown with Twisted Fate. Yet, after learning the truth of what had gone down between them and escaping certain death at the hands of Gangplank with his old comrade, Graves put his vengeance aside. Older, if not wiser, the pair look to pick up where they left off, seeking to make themselves rich using their unique blend of trickery, heists, and focused violence.

“We’re here for your gold, not your heads, so don’t nobody decide to be a hero.”

Holed up in an empty bar, bleeding from a dozen wounds and surrounded by armed men who wanted him dead, Malcom Graves had seen better days. He’d seen worse ones, too, so he wasn’t worried yet. Graves leaned over the smashed bar and helped himself to a bottle, sighing as he read the label.

“Demacian wine? That all you got?”

“It’s the most expensive bottle I have...” said the innkeeper, cowering below the bar in a glittering ocean of broken glass.

Graves looked around the bar and grinned.

“I reckon it’s the only bottle you got left.”

The man had panic written all over him. He clearly wasn’t used to being in the middle of a gunfight. This wasn’t Bilgewater, where fatal brawls broke out ten times a day. Piltover was regarded a more civilized city than Graves’s hometown. In some ways, at least.

He yanked the cork free with his teeth and spat it to the floor before taking a swig. He swilled it around his mouth like he’d seen rich folks do before swallowing it.

“Pisswater” he said “but beggars can’t be choosers, huh?”

A voice shouted through the broken windows, buoyed with confidence it hadn’t earned and the false bravado of numbers.

“Give it up, Graves. There’s seven of us to one of you. This ain’t going to end well.”

“Damn straight it ain’t” hollered Graves in return. “If you want to walk away from this, you best go fetch more men!”

He took another swig from the bottle, then put it down on the bar.

“Time to get to work” he said, lifting his one-of-a-kind shotgun from the bar.

Graves reloaded, pushing fresh shells home. The weapon snapped together with a satisfyingly lethal sound, loud enough to carry to the men outside. Anyone who knew him would know that sound and what it meant.

The outlaw slid off the barstool and made his way to the door, glass crunching beneath his boot heels. He stooped to glance through a cracked window. Four men crouched behind makeshift cover: two on the upper floor of a fancy workshop, another two in shadowed doorways to either side. All held crossbows or muskets at the ready.

“We tracked you halfway across the world, you son of a bitch” shouted the same voice. “Bounty didn’t say nothin’ about you being alive or dead. Walk out now with that cannon of yours held high and there don’t need to be no more bloodshed.”

He drew a silver serpent from his pocket and flipped it onto the bar, where it spun through a pool of spilled rum before landing heads up. A trembling hand reached up to take it. Graves grinned.

“That’s for the door” he said.

“What about the door?” asked the innkeeper.

Graves hammered his boot into the inn’s front door, smashing it from its hinges. He dove through the splintered frame, rolling to one knee, gun blasting from the hip.

“Alright, you bastards!” he roared. “Let’s finish this!”

Malcolm Graves was born in the back of a Bilgewater tavern and left there with a bottle of spiked milk. He survived a childhood in the pirate-run slums using every dirty trick in the book. Intent on building a new life for himself, he stowed away on the first ship to the mainland he could sneak aboard. However, the grim realities of the world forced him to eke out an unsavory living in the underground of various city-states, jumping the border whenever things got too hot. At a particularly high-stakes game of cards, he found himself seated opposite Twisted Fate. They both flipped four aces on the final hand. It was the first time either conman had met his equal. The two formed an alliance, swindling marks at the tables and scrapping back-to-back in the alleys afterward. Together, they ran the streets – stacking chips, decks, and rap sheets.

Unfortunately Graves made the mistake of hustling a hefty sum from Dr. Aregor Priggs, a high-ranking Zaunite official and businessman. When Priggs discovered how he'd been played, he became obsessed with revenge. He learned about Twisted Fate's all-consuming desire to control magic and he promptly offered him a trade: serve Graves up in exchange for enrollment in a procedure which would grant his wish. Twisted Fate took the deal – both he and Graves knew the stakes of their arrangement, but the offer was too good. Once acquired, Priggs had Graves taken to a special location built to hold men whose crimes – or more precisely their punishments – were meant to stay off the books. Graves endured years of captivity at the hands of Zaun's wardens before he managed to escape. One of his fellow detainees introduced him to an eccentric gunsmith who modified a shotgun exactly to his specifications. He named it "Destiny." After he paid a visit to Priggs, Graves joined the League of Legends with two targets in his sights: Twisted Fate and payback.

"They got a saying in the locker: ain't got nothin' but time to plan."

Malcolm Graves is the picture of resilience. His body, a checkerboard of scars and cracked calluses, remains fit despite his age. His expression is grim, determined. He carries an oversized shotgun in one hand. Its weight is irrational for its function, but it complements him well.

However, the real story lies in his eyes. They seem stubbornly fixed on something beyond his vision, something unachievable, some goal that has always remained slightly out of reach. Nothing will steer him from his course. It's as though he has pursued the carrot-on-a-stick for so long that, even though he learned the trick, it's all he knows how to do anymore.

REFLECTION

Same old song and dance, Graves thought. Couple of big wigs trying to put on a show.

Graves wasn't one for theatrics. He preferred to keep most of his social interactions 12-gauge and below. Things hadn't always been this way. Once upon a time, he genuinely delighted in the game, fleecing marks and skipping town before the chips could fall. Back then he had a partner with a like-minded philosophy: the longer the con, the better.

Good times.

Then Twisted Fate turned on him faster than a foal in a firepit.

Graves was no stranger to the double cross, but somehow Fate managed to blindside him. Never again. He paid a fair chunk of his life for that oversight. It was a hard lesson, but then again the most important ones tended to be.

Now all that was left was to even the score.

The clank of crashing steel broke his thoughts. It was a tone of bitter finality, the chime of swindled life. He knew it well. He spun to find a familiar set of bars lined mockingly between him and the freedom he so recently won. Behind them, the oily face of the man who incarcerated him, Dr. Aregor Priggs, sneered in victory. He raised his arm, happy to put a slug between Priggs' beady eyes, but his hand was empty.

He was trapped, again, in Priggs' privately funded detention facility.

Well, this is a setback.

Priggs grinned broadly, gathering a froth of reeking spittle in the corners of his mouth. He was a bulbous, slimy man whose only redeeming quality, as far as Graves was concerned, was that he had the stones to look his captives in the eye while he kept them holed up like dogs. Graves had worked out that Priggs used this little sanctuary primarily as a place to make high-profile competitors disappear, but he had earned a special cell for taking two of Priggs' more fetching mistresses for a week-long excursion on the sleaze's dime. By the time Priggs' retinue of head-bobbing corporate flunkies tracked all the funds Graves funneled, he and Fate were already in Demacia hustling vacationers on Conqueror Beach.

"I bet you thought you saw the last of me," Priggs wheezed. He always wheezed when he talked.

"The last I cared to," Graves said. "You looked a might improved with that pig face of yours spread across a wall." Every word carried a consequence, so Graves chose to savor them.

"I hope you still have that spirit when I'm through with you," Priggs spat. Graves didn't flinch. He may as well have been a tick for how long he'd held on in that place, with few friends and fewer decencies, tended by whatever trash Priggs found to run the outfit. Pain had long ago become a chore more than any kind of punishment.

"I hope you eat something lighter the next time I make you soil yourself," he returned.

"Why do you want to join the League, Graves?" The question was unusually direct for the wheezing oaf, but when the subject was the most powerful organization in Valoran, perhaps even his chaps got a little chafed.

"Don't know why you'd stop to wonder," he said. "You know my history as well as anyone."

"Miss me that much?" The new voice, a relic from the past, made Graves' blood boil. He grabbed the bars, knuckles white, as Twisted Fate strolled into view behind Priggs.

"Fate! I know you're crooked as a quarryman's spine, but you got a real set of tires throwing in with this sack of stool again!" This wasn't the reunion Graves had planned all these years.

"Why you-" the fat man sputtered.

"Why do you want to join the League, Graves?" Twisted Fate's face was calm, unreadable.

"You let me out of this cage and I'll show you-" Graves roared.

"Why do you want-" Fate started again.

"I'm going to ruin your con, Fate! The world may buy that you're some kind of ‘champion,' but I'm gonna show them what you really are. I will take everything you have, and when I'm done, you'll be lucky to scam the heat off a campfire." Graves took a deep breath. He didn't realize how much Twisted Fate had gotten to him. He silently vowed never to give Fate the satisfaction of seeing him this angry again.

"How does it feel, exposing your mind?" Fate smirked, a simple gesture that was acid in Graves' veins. He swallowed, determined not to lose his cool again.

"Feels like I just squatted with spurs on," he muttered.

Fate chuckled. "It's good to see you again, Malcolm."

With that, he strode out of sight, Priggs close on his heels. Graves sat in his cell, smoldering, until the bars suddenly opened. Cautiously, he exited the cell…

…and found himself standing in the Institute of War, weapon in hand.

Always putting on a show.

Graves clenched his teeth and cocked his gun. He wasn't one for theatrics, but if it was a show they wanted...

Abilities

New Destiny

[Passive]

Innate: Graves' shotgun has some unique properties --

Double Barrel: Graves must reload when he runs out of ammo. Attack Speed reduces reload time only slightly, but reduces time between attacks dramatically

Active: Fires an explosive shell with such force that it knocks Graves back. The Shell deals physical damage to the first enemy hit. After hitting an enemy Champion or reaching the end of its range, the shell explodes, dealing physical damage in a cone.

Initial Physical Damage: 250 / 400 / 550 (+150% bonus)

Explosion Physical Damage: 200 / 320 / 440 (+120% bonus)

Patch History

The new emphasis on early jungle scrapping is pretty much Graves' happy place, and it's left other champions six feet under. Dialing back his early dueling and putting a longer window on his full combo should slow the snowball a bit.

Graves isn’t getting ahead in the scenarios he should. The Outlaw is constantly being outpaced in the early game and is not able to get his ball rolling enough to dictate the game. With a little bit more health and damage in his rotation, Graves should to be able to clear the jungle without having to have perfect mechanics—and do so a little bit faster, enabling him to scale properly.

Despite changes earlier in the season, we’re still seeing enemies of the Outlaw torn asunder. Our approach this patch is to hit his early game in two-pronged fashion. First, we’re shifting some of End of the Line’s power to its bonus attack damage ratios, reducing his early game burst. We’re also hitting Collateral Damage’s cooldown in the early game, as it can often feel like his ult is always available. This should force Graves to really consider the best time to use Collateral Damage, rather than just firing it on cooldown.

We're pretty confident we could just say "Graves is absurd right now, so we're nerfing him" and leave it at that, but let's dive in. Right now the cowboy is just universally strong: he deals a hell of a lot of damage, he clears well, he's tanky for a marksman... the list goes on.

Graves needs some weaknesses for opponents to exploit, and we identified True Grit’s resistance stats as an opportunity to add one. He’s now significantly more vulnerable to magic damage threats, whether you’re attacking his early game (Elise says hi!) or trying to blow him up in teamfights. How to capitalize on this is up to you, but you now have better options to deal with a Graves than spamming the ban button in champion select.

Back in 6.23, we shipped an under-the-hood fix to a general piece of code that True Grit uses. This corrected a bug causing True Grit to refresh off any instance of damage Graves dealt, rather than only basic attacks (as stated in the tooltip). Being correct, however, isn’t always the same as being right. The bug was in place for so long that we had balanced around it, and Graves mains had grown accustomed to the extra refreshes. So, we’re putting the behavior back in and changing the tooltip instead.

Graves is the marksman for players who want to get right up in the enemy’s face. True Grit gives Graves enough durability to take a few hits when going toe-to-toe with opponents, but it’s also making him too tanky when he’s kiting away from a fight. Graves’s defenses are meant to enable aggressive Quick Draws, so we’re weakening the reward when he isn’t dashing in.

E - Quickdraw

TRUE GRIT CAP :[4 stacks]⇒ 8 stacks

LET’S SEE YOU GRIT THOSE TEETH : Now gains 2 stacks of True Grit upon dashing towards an enemy champion

v6.8GravesBasic attacks deal less damage, but crits are more valuable.

Graves doesn’t know the first thing about time-travel, but he and Ekko share a lot of similarities this patch - they deal tons of damage, and they’re practically unkillable. While Graves isn’t building pure defense, his unique interactions with lifesteal and basic-attack scaling let him get away with prioritizing efficient hybrid defensive items (Death’s Dance, Maw, Sterak’s) to wreck early and wreck late. We’re retuning New Destiny’s specs so Graves has to make a choice between being critting people’s heads off or being the gritty, sustained cleanup crew.

v6.3Q damage down, and now has a brief delay upon colliding with terrain. Q/R no longer cancel his recoil animation.

Now that the dust has settled and builds are optimized, the results are in: Graves bursts you real fast, and he's not a fan of taking damage. We're cool with the G-man doin' his thing (as long as he's not smoking), but we're addressing his dominance in two ways.

First, we want to force Graves' to make a bigger tradeoff for his damage vs defenses, seeing as his baseline output is so high that he transitions into tank stats early while still managing to make heads roll. Next, we're targeting just how quickly he pumps lead into his targets - often obliterating challenges in a series of animation-cancelled spellcasts.

Graves being the slow-moving, burly guy makes sense for a shotgun-toting gritty outlaw, but introducing more counterplay to his patterns should help you settle the score.

Passive - New Destiny

DEAD CRAB SCUTTLIN' Basic attacks no longer stun the Rift Scuttler

TAKE YOUR TIME : Graves can no longer interrupt the 0.25 second recoil after his basic attacks with Q - End of the Line or R - Collateral Damage.

Q - End of the Line

SECOND HIT BASE DAMAGE :[85/145/205/265/325]⇒ 80/125/170/215/260

WARNING SHOT : Now plays a brief animation before detonating after colliding with terrain

The beefiest of the Marksman lineup, Graves' burst and tankiness were hallmarks of the carry you'd call when you needed some fighting done - that is, until other bot laners simply started outshining him. Be it rockets, piercing light or laser barrages, Ol' Malcolm's struggled to set himself apart from the pack beyond his bad attitude and big gun.

That is, until he got himself a new big gun.

Armed with New Destiny, Graves finally has the tools to live up to the up-close-and-personal fantasy he's always promised. While most carries kite the front lines, the burden's on the enemy to kite Graves, lest they take the full brunt of New Destiny's rounds to the gut.

v5.8Buckshot deals less damage at max range and slightly more damage at close range.

"Tough as nails and strong like Gromp, Malcolm Graves is the go-to when you need a lane demolished. We want him to keep his signature explosiveness (and all that southern Bilgewater charm), but at a distance he prefers: up close and personal. Simply put, trading at long-range will see Graves getting less bang for his buck-shot but, once he gets in their comfort zone, it's the end of the line. "

"We're documenting the collateral in Collateral Damage (this is now the third time we have used this joke)."

R - Collateral Damage

UNDOCUMENTED BUFFBack in patch 4.13, we increased the damage of Collateral Damage but forgot to mention that this would also buff Collateral Damage's Explosion Damage to 200/280/360 ⇒ 200/320/440. There is no functional change from 4.13, but we're just documenting it.

v4.13Graves is putting more damage back into collateral damage. We may have used this joke before, but that doesn't matter. Also Buckshot does more damage for each extra bullet hit.

"We're buffing Graves' ability to shoot people with a shotgun."

Q - Buckshot

THIS IS GONNA TICKLE Hitting a target in the face with Buckshot deals 35% ⇒ 40% damage for each additional bullet

R - Collateral Damage

BASE PHYSICAL DAMAGE250/350/450 ⇒ 250/400/550

v4.5Quickdraw costs less mana to use, Collateral Damage's explosion damage is now the same as the impact damage.

Tools

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